BuCor chief must be someone with no police or military backgrounds-solon

Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — A lawmaker on Friday suggested that retired police or military officials should no longer be allowed to head the Bureau of Corrections following the recent disappearance of high-profile prisoner Rolito Go from a detention facility.

Bayan Muna Party-list Representative Neri Colmenares said that BuCor should stop the “abused tradition of appointing retired police or military generals to head the Bureau of Corrections.” This, he said, would help the government prevent corruption, inefficiency, incompetence and “palakasan” inside the penal system.

Go, a convicted road rage killer, went missing from the New Bilibid Prison Tuesday night. He and his family insist that the case was not of an escaped prisoner but that of kidnapping.

Colmenares said that it was a “mistake” to assign generals to lead the BuCor when it was “no longer punitive but rehabilitative.”

“These generals know nothing about rehabilitative or restorative justice, worse, they even bungle the job of securing the inmates which was supposedly their expertise,” said the lawmaker who insisted that BuCor director Gaudencio Pangilinan, who has gone on indefinite leave, be replaced.

Colmenares insisted that a person “not from the military or police” should replace Pangilinan. The person has to be “knowledgeable in psychology, penology, and restorative justice.”